YEAH ---
take that to bed --- see what sleeping on it would buy . . .
-- Alright!
he liked that
YER ON!
. . . that was enthusiastic!
heading
off to bed
his
head in his hands like a fullback ramming the ball up the gut on a fourth and
inches
YER ON!
full
bore
then he laid down laid there working
on it thinking it over turning it over hard pondering
ae ea what was the parcel the word the mutant
surely he wasnt going to let it slip him
he
could remember it them he could gawddamn him if he didnt
jet black
sleep enveloped him
dreaming
a series of dreams
not that he could hold onto the
earliest ones torn to pitiful tatters in
his fingers as his dreaming raced through dimensions irreal
possessed or of himself when he
hadnt become who he was now
the
person he was who preceded him
no he couldnt hold onto them
he scarcely recalled a residence wood-slatted
homey lawns shrubs flower beds
unearthed bulbs scattered coffee grounds fat black carpenter ants
infesting an crooked crippled apple tree still trying to throw blossoms against
the insects its virus cancer
these vaporous bits postcards film
broke like thin ash and were buried behind the last dream he dreamt
a bunny hutch
he actually saw the words somewhere in the dream
he liked bunnies
he was walking on a city sidewalk Bunny Hutch there it was!
a paper advertisement slapped and glued to the back of a bus bench
the air smelled like rain
it was evening
the
streets were black they could have been
wet or rain hung pregnant above his head out of sight above lower clouds whose bellies
were painted by the citys lighting bleached
by yellow metrolight emanating from the tall elongated elastic
streetlamps
he caught the address on the ad Michigan
he
was on Michigan
by
its number it was four blocks north
he liked bunnies
a sharpedged modern building beating
it away from the street in a cleft chevronshaped
no overhead
lighting
small path
lights
amber beacons
slick
toadstools
a pebbled aggregate sidewalk leading
the way off the city street its traffic sparse
a few cars
pawing rearing like agitated horses loathsome to be out and not in their stalls
fresh watered and hayed
the walkway descended by a small
degree discernable only when he glanced
back over his shoulder and saw that he was looking into the second storey
windows of the building across the street over the curbs lip
looking back over his shoulder he
recognised a shadow attended him along beside
his
a masculine V-shaped
shadow twinned his though several meters
longer
then looking to see what cast it that thing disappeared
its shadow fluttered and like
dandelion seeds dispersed was gone in a
sliver of a moment
Alone
a
loner
though not as if he ever felt in
tandem or walked among others
Alone
it felt good
he hadnt paused or stopped
walking after witnessing the presence
its shadow
the
path hadnt stopped descending
he found his way to the mouth of
the building
its superstructure rose like a
dagger threatening the sky
and turning standing before it face on he immediately felt a coolness on his face
and at his back
he felt empty space
how
empty space sometimes feels like eyes watching you watching undisclosed secretive
leering
he
shivered he turned halfexpecting the
presence that accompanied him to have reappeared
there was nothing behind him
an
enormous openness
adverse to
the urban cloister surrounding them
it was beyond a
short wall and tubular copper railing that acquired a patina greening
walking up to the rail beneath the fat empty air lay a subterranean courtyard
it artfully conceived filled with raised beds plants saplings
winding paths and discrete benches
at his left was a broad staircase
which descended into the garden
its treads
and risers elaborately wide and shallow affixed to a sheer face of stone plates
beneath the overhang he stood
atop soft lighting illumination fluttered
like a candlelight or coloured wraiths winging their separate ways and
evaporating in midair
a Sirens
voice couldnt have been more appealing or seductive
he wanted to see from where the light came
and there was no
one or anything to stop him
he no sooner began down the
stairs still unable to see under the
overhang the treads and risers
transfigured and meld into a narrowing wild animal or goat trail the sheer plates turned into slicks of stone
abrupt crags outshoots and crumbling slag
the garden beds overflowed like trembling lava their loam washing over the now-negligible
paths the few saplings fecundate and
sprawling at their pleasure their roots
worming the earth surfacing gulping
moist perfumed air and diving again
making the paths bottom the miasma of primitive air and heavy leafed
canopy above shrouded what had been
the black
dagger shaken free of hands that held it in place
and from where the lights emanated
stood a band shell its arches
reticulating back and down footlights
afore
the earth trembled unsure of itself embarrassed by his eye
there
was a red hiss
and
the footlights erupted brilliantly a
divine white and in the moment before
the shock and brilliance invaded his eyes and head he saw a womans figure
behind them at the shells center her shadow etched jet black at the convex
ceiling and back wall of the shell
his vision and senses
recoiled then adamantly sprung back the eruption left fireflies and particles in
the air then despite the corporeal darkness her shadow shone blacker where it had been
etched and remained
an array of globes flickering minor suns burst into being behind where the woman
was
they were immediately
swarmed by Deathshead moths and large butterflies
they muted and colourised
the light invading the shell with their bodies wings and attitudes
under these lights she became
more evident
she was fixed at the stages
center sitting on a ladderback chair
it appeared she was bound to the chair
by binds he could not see her
naked skin was pulled as if wound by something
the light shuttered
the binds seemed to be pearlescent or
translucent serpents invisible when dark
she was blindfolded her hair was pulled up on top her head and
held with pins or woven and twined
the
blindfolds loose ends hung down against her shoulders and back but only for a moment
then they unwound
themselves and fell away from the back of her head
the
blindfold did not fall away it changed into
a black censor bar denying her eyes from being seen
she
craned her head back and the furrows on her torso plumping her breasts between
them holding her captive to the chairback lessened and filled out scarcely rouged
the invisible serpents fell away as the loose ends of the blindfold did
from that freed attitude from the waist up she moved her body attractively
like a cloth unfurled in a breeze or a seaweed frond undulating in a bubbling
swell
a rough cloak manifested itself across
her lap where it seemed she remained tethered fast
and
blindly she grasped it to cover her nakedness
the cloak was torn and the many holes suggested themselves as for her
neck and arms but werent
yanking
it down over her head she sprung her hair free
it
tumbled wildly down onto her shoulders
caught
up in the cloaks rents a peepaboo sort
of showing ensued and prevailed as she tried time and time again to hide
herself her breasts from view
every
effort more titillating than the last
he couldnt look away
he wouldnt look away
all her desperate manoeuvrings
failed her shyness obstructed obliterated
her
manoeuvrings
hapless
manoeuvring
My
Gawd that was it
he was trying to spin man-over
from manoeuvring manoeuvre! man-over! not ae for ea or vice versa oue for a blatant o
he never said it aloud she never
would have known
she would have been no
better off than the woman in the chair
his realisation pithed the
dream
the moths and butterflies grew black
and collapsed on the arranged orbs
as the
light tilted away she forgot the rude cloth
whatever
held her legs fast relented
she turned in profile breathless in silhouette
which
he watched and watched and watched until she merged with the darkness
her shadow absorbed
as she
messengers dreams
messengers all
Thursday afternoon/evening, 26 2.
15
1842, Wednesday
the day-between-two-Ts, 4 3. 15
